The symptoms and diseases caused by a deterioration of brain function include depression, schizophrenia, delirium, dementia (cerebrovascular dementia, Alzheimer's disease, and the like), and the like. With the aging of the population in modern society, especially the increase in the number of people with dementia is becoming a serious social issue. There are various symptoms observed among individuals with dementia, and symptoms commonly observed among them include dysmnesia, disorientation, decline in judgment and thinking ability, and the like. The forms of dementia which affect especially a large number of individuals are cerebrovascular dementia and Alzheimer's disease. For example, in patients with cerebrovascular dementia, damage to the nerve cells in the cerebral cortex and hippocampus caused by obstruction of the brain blood flow gives a rise to cognitive impairment and dysmnesia. For this reason, in addition to treating pre-existing diseases, such as high-blood pressure, diabetes, and hypercholesterolemia, which may trigger cerebrovascular disorders, drugs which are capable of improving brain blood flow and/or drugs which are capable of protecting brain nerve cells are administered. In the meantime, causes of Alzheimer's disease have not been clearly elucidated; however, since a decrease in the level of acetylcholine, which is a neurotransmitter in the brain, is observed in the patients with this disease, a hypofunction of cholinergic neurons is assumed to be one of the causes (reference 2). Therefore, a therapeutic strategy aiming at preventing the hypofunction of cholinergic neurons by increasing the concentration of acetylcholine has been the mainstream for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.
Currently, as a therapeutic drug against Alzheimer's disease, acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, for example, such as donepezil hydrochloride, are commercially available. However, the acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, such as donepezil hydrochloride, have their drawbacks that they should not be administered for an extended period of time due to their hepatotoxicity and strong side-effects as well as that they are costly.
Meantime, as a report in regard to peptides showing an anti-amnesic effect, for example, it has been reported that XPLPR (SEQ ID NO:4)(X represents L, I, M, F, or W) demonstrated an improving effect against scopolamine-induced amnesia when administered intracerebroventricularly or orally at 300 mg/kg, and, a release of acetylcholine from the intracerebral C3a receptor has been suggested as one of the mechanisms involved in this effect (reference 1). Scopolamine is believed to function as a muscarinic receptor antagonist that induces the hypofunction of cholinergic neurons. Working as an inducer of brain dysfunction, scopolamine is used in the production of model animals to be used in the development of therapeutic drugs against Alzheimer's disease. In regard to the prophylactic and/or curative activities against brain dysfunction by the action of scopolamine, their effects may be demonstrated in behavioral pharmacological tests, such as a Y-shaped maze test, an eight-aim maze test, and a passive avoidance test. Further, the effects of improving and/or strengthening brain function may be demonstrated in the same behavioral pharmacological tests with use of normal animals. However, all these peptides need to be administered in a large dose orally, intraabdominally, intracerebroventricularly, or the like in order to demonstrate their actions; therefore, they are not considered to be orally ingestible substances capable of demonstrating a sufficient level of effects. In addition, there has been no report on evaluation of peptides of the present invention and their analogs; therefore, their actions involved in the improvement of brain function have been hitherto unknown.
Thus, with the progress of the aging of the society, demands for development of pharmaceutical agents, which prevent the symptoms and diseases caused by a deterioration of brain function and further demonstrate curative effects on the symptoms and diseases, and for further development of safer compounds which are excellent in food application are becoming increasingly stronger.